"Keith Cunningham"wrote ..
"Fred" wrote
I'm in the Midlands. Has anyone suffered from blight (tomato or
potato) this year?

A friend said he lost his tomatoes. he went away for a weekend and
when he came back they had gone. Could that have been blight?

I had problems with slugs last year so this year I planted kestrel and
Romano potatoes. One week they were growing nicely; the next week
there was nothing there! It was as if they had been stolen! I have dug
the ground and there are some tubers. Most are fine but there have
been a few that were mushy.

I don't know much about blight. Does this sound like it may have been
the cause? I've read a little via google and I understand it is
carried in the wind. Would polytunnels reduce the risk of blight?

I have also read that some people spray every couple of weeks. Do many
people here do that?

Finally, what varieties can you recommend that are blight and slug
resistant?


Last year blight destroyed my entire crop. This year I've grown Fantasico
and Ferline, outside, in the same compost as last year, and they're
blight-free so far. They're just starting to ripen. I grow them in outside
in pots.


We too are growing Fantasio, Ferline and also Legend tomatoes outside on the
allotment as usual this year.
Blight has struck our area and as usual the Ferline and the Fantasio toms
have shows slight signs of the disease but it doesn't spread from small
black patches on the leaves (looks a bit like Black Spot on Roses) and the
crop is superb with the remaining fruit ripening fast.
The Legend toms are excellent, big, soft deep red flesh and meaty, but most
of the plants are showing severe blight although the fruit are only partly
infected, and the ones not infected seem to be able to ripen despite the
damage to the plant. Anyway, we have had a very good crop, buckets full, and
there are a lot more to come.

The potatoes also got blight but were already going over due to the very dry
weather this summer so weren't too badly infected, also Kestral, Romano and
Victoria. We had a couple of Romano tubers with blight, more with slug
damage strangely, and a few Victoria. As always we are strict about what we
sack up, only the best, the undamaged, so should be OK but will have to
sniff in the sacks weekly to ensure we don't lose the lot.

We did try the Sarpo blight resistant ones a few years back but didn't think
the flavour was any good, not worth the effort. We'd rather buy some spuds
in Sainsbury's.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
just W. of London